BY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
The Southern Nigeria People’s Mandate (SNPM), an NGO, has urged the Federal Government to strenthen the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) with personnel, logistics and technology.
“This is for the Agency to truly be ahead of unwholesome drug producers and paddlers flooding the country with adulterated drugs as revealed by recent closure of drug markets in Lagos, Onitsha and Aba,” SNPM said in a statement.
The statement issued on Sunday in Enugu was a fall out of hours of deliberations by members of the NGO on the way foward to better protect Nigerians from “the Merchant of death”.
The statement was jointly signed by the National President of SNPM, Chief Augustine Chukwudum and its Secretary General, Mr Segun Diya.
It called on the government to expand or establish more existing modern laboratories of the Agency in order to examine authenticity and standard of drugs and beverages in real time.
The statement noted that it seems some drugs and beverages made in Nigeria are also below acceptable health standard.
It said, “We are calling on President Bola Tinubu to set up a panel of inquiry to fish out personnel of security agencies that compromised to allow fake and substandard drugs from foreign countries to flood Nigeria markets.
“Government should also handle the blanket closure of markets with care, as most innocent people are already suffering the sins of fake drug barons.
“It is not in the best interest of the nation to blanketly close markets that directly feeds more than two million people daily because of the activities of few criminals, and few corrupt personnel of security agencies, who allow the fake drugs passage.”
The statement also called on the Federal Government to painstakingly follow ongoing investigation and ensure that fake drug barons and their collaborators are brought to book, “there should be no sacred cow”.
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